FILE BH 2014 – Installation

Karina Smigla-Bobinski – SIMULACRA

Abstract:
“SIMULACRA” is an optophysical experimental arrangement. At its heart are four LCD monitor panels, which are assembled in the form of a hollow square, and installed at eye level in the middle of the room. The ensemble appears internally gutted, overgrown and embraced. A tangle of cables and control devices pours out of the middle of the square. All around it several magnifying lenses dangle from chains. The imageless glaring ray of the monitors looks as if the images had fallen out of them. What remains is the essence of the medium: Light.
But the images are still in the screens. It requires only a small visual aid to recognize them. LCD-Monitors require several polarizing films in front and behind the pixel layers to produce visible images. These polarizing films filter the certain vibration directions of the emitting light. One of them is located on the surface of the monitor and can easily be scraped off using solvent and a glass scraper. The stripped monitor doesn’t display any more pictures, but shines with an intense white light.
If you hold a polarizing film, as in “SIMULACRA” in a magnifying glass version, before the monitor, then the function is restored. It is an impressive, wondrous experience when images suddenly appear from the pure white by the mere glance through a seemingly transparent film. But if you turn the lens in front of your eyes, the polarizing structure of the film creates wild color shifts or even complementary negative images.
In the design of video images that run across the screens, Karina Smigla-Bobinski worked skillfully with the effect of an opaque glistening body of light: – hands, feet, long black hair pressed against the inside surface of the screens, making them only visible within through the lenses, before disappearing into the white nothingness.

Biography:
Karina Smigla-Bobinski lives and works as a freelance artist in Munich and Berlin. She studied painting and visual communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and Munich. She works as an intermedia artist with analog and digital media. She produces and collaborates on projects ranging from interactive to mixed reality art in form of analog interactive installations, kinetic sculptures, in-situ&online;-art-projects, art interventions and multimedia physical theater performances.